Funny Stories

Ok, we all know this is true but how many of us actually do anything with this.  The Bible says a merry heart doeth good like a medicine.  Lately, I have discovered this fact again.  Lately, I laugh much more.  I enjoy life much more.  I am not sure that my writing is funny but I hope some of these stories will make you laugh.

This past Sunday, I was waking my daughter up so we could get ready to go to church.  She is one of the most beautiful little girls you have ever seen and when she is just waking up she looks like an angel.  So as I was talking to her trying to gently bring her fully awake and she smiled up at me and said, "Dad, do we have to go to church today?"  As gently as I could, I replied, "Yes sweetheart we do."  Her reply - "Well this day is already a disaster."

The other day I took the kids to their favorite donut shop in Saginaw.  Once all of us had our favorites we were sitting eating when a young mother walked in carrying her baby girl.  The little girl was old enough to hold her head up and she was looking over mom's shoulder at us eating our donuts.  My daughter leaned over to me and said, "Dad I was that little once.   Only I was cuter!"

OK this is one for those of you who are older than 30.  One day I was talking with my daughter and I told her not to touch something or she would get cooties.  Her response - "Dad, what's a cootie."

There comes a time in the life of a parent when you have the birds and the bees talk with your children.  My oldest was in 5th grade last year and he saw a film explaining the whole thing.  After the film he had some questions.  So we sat for about an hour and I explained things to him the best I could.  Toward, the end of our conversation my oldest asked, "Dad, when do I have to do this?"  I told him he should wait until he was married.  His response - Whew, that's a relief.  I just hope he keeps that attitude until he is grown.

My middle son was talking to me one day about one of his favorite things at the time - Thomas the Tank Engine.  He told me that he was going to give away a lot of his toys which I thought was really sweet.  He had seen Toy Story 3 and this was what Andy did in the movie.  However, he told me that he was going to keep his train table and give it to his kids to play with.  "Matthew," I asked, "do you know what you have to have before you can have children?"  "No what," he replied.

"A wife," I said.
"OK dad."
"Do you know what you have to have before you can have a wife?"
"No"
"You need to have a girlfriend."
With the most dejected look on his face, he said, "You have go to be kidding me!"

There is a good friend of mine who I go to lunch with regularly.  Now he has a pretty dry sense of humor but he is really funny.  So one day we go to a restaurant in Fort Worth and the hostess asks Ellis if he has a smoking preference.  My friend joking replies, "Marijuana."  She edges a little closer to him and says, "Me too!"  I have never seen him turn so red.

Today I was talking to a guy that works for me.  I told him that I dropped my girlfriend's car off at the local Subaru dealership to have it serviced.  To which he replied, "That's nice.  What kind of car does she drive?"

I hope at least one of these made you laugh a little.  If you have any funny stories, I would love to hear them.  Please let me hear them.

That's another Opinion of the Minion. 

The Minion and the Box

My last blog was about the Box.  In the interest of time, I will not go over that post here.  If you haven't read it yet, you might want to read that one before this one.  This one will make more sense if you do.

Last time, I talked about the great gifts that God sends to our planet.  One of them is you and I described what these gifts looked like to me.  The people that God sends to earth look like very pretty presents.  Now over time here on earth, the Boxes get holes and tears in them.  Sometimes stuff gets inside the box that doesn't belong.  Instead of character strengths, there are character flaws.  But know this, God never took the talents and gifts out of any of the Boxes.  In other words, when He placed gifts inside of you, he never took them out again.  Well, you might say, I know this person or that person and they are not nice.  Osama Bin Laden was not a nice person was he?  He is responsible for the deaths of many people.  But did you know that God put great gifts inside him when he sent him to the earth.  Guess what.  Those gifts were still inside him when he left the earth.  Unfortunately, they were never seen like God intended.

Most of us don't know anyone like that.  But many of us know people who just aren't nice.  Guess what.  God put those gifts inside them too and they are permanently there.  No matter how bad the devil would like to get them out of us, he simply doesn't have the power to take them out.  We can choose not to develop them but Satan can't steal them from us.  

Here is another interesting note.  Have you ever noticed that we are quick to point out the holes in the box or the tears in the paper but we typically don't notice the gold on the inside?  Well it seems like that happens regularly.  Take the kid at school who doesn't dress like you do or maybe she is just a little shy.  Maybe she sits by herself at lunch and everyone thinks she is strange.  There is something great inside that person that should be celebrated.  Let me illustrate with a story I once heard.

There was this church that got a new member.  The new member was a very pretty lady who happened to wear shorts that were too short and a shirt that was cut way too low to church every Sunday.  This went on for several weeks and the ladies of the church got more and more upset about the whole thing.  They were calling her all sorts of ugly names.  But right in the middle of it all, someone decided that they were going to buy her a dress and make her clean up her act.  Well when they brought the woman the dress she was overjoyed to have something so beautiful to wear to church.  It turns out that she came from a very bad situation and the short shorts and low cut shirt were the best things she had to wear.  She was very thankful to have something much less revealing to wear to church.  That woman had a very admirable trait.  What was it you ask?  She learned to do her very best even if it wasn't as good as someone else.  Also, she had the courage to go to church when she wasn't able to dress like everyone else.  I like that.

Let me tell you about a boy I know.  Now on the outside, he is not the most athletic.  He is in middle school and he is just like every other sixth grader struggling to cope with this new phase in his life.  I remember my time there and would not want to do it again.  This particular kid loves to build things.  Now it would be easy to push him to do more athletics like football or baseball but instead the right thing for his parents is to encourage him to build things.  See he may never be the captain of the football team but what if he builds the next Golden Gate bridge or what if he invents something that will get us off of oil for fuel?  It would be a waste to try to make him something he is not.  Instead, we need to celebrate the gift for building things that God put inside his Box.

So what am I telling you?  Take a little time to look inside someone's box and celebrate who they are today.

That's another Opinion of the Minion